QueryTrackerBlog

Monday, December 31, 2007

After two long months of development, QT2 is now up and running. I thought it would take most of the day, but things went smoothly and it was ready by about 9am on December 31st.

Of course, it is far from being done. I will be tweaking and adding things to it for several weeks. I figure I was able to incorporate about two-thirds of the features I wanted to add, so I still have some work ahead of me. If you made a suggestion for a new feature but don't see it, it probably just means I haven't gotten to it yet. If you want to contact me to see if your feature is on the list, please go right ahead.

The first thing most people will likely notice is the new menu system. The original menu became quite cluttered as more and more features were added. This one is cleaner and can grow without getting ugly.

The other thing that stands out almost right away is all the on-screen help. Just put your mouse over any of the yellow question marks to get instant help. Plus, almost any icon also has help attatched, which can be viewed just by placing your mouse over it.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

With a self-imposed deadline of January 1st, I've been very busy working on the new version of QueryTracker (which explains why I haven't been doing much blogging.) Yesterday I opened up QT2 to a group of beta testers who are giving it a full workout, and even though not all of the components are there, feedback has already been good.

Sadly, I won't have everything done by the deadline, but there is still plenty of new stuff and I am still planning to release everything available on Jan. 1. So, what will be different in QT2? Plenty. Where do I even begin?

Greatly expanded search tools for searching for agents, including geographic region, and more.

A system of user-definable "folders" so you can organize agents and queries.

A Query List page showing all of the agents you have queried, sorted however you want and contained in a tree structure with branches for each manuscript and folder.

Tracking has been expanded and broken into two categories; query letters and manuscript submissions, so now you can track all phases of your agent quest and view more detailed statistics about each category.

An agent "Watch" feature which allows you to select agents and be notified if any user adds a comment for that agent or anything about the agent's profile changes.

Tons of content sensitive help, making it easier to use the system to its fullest potential.

So many little improvements that I can't even think of them all, but one that has been a big hit with the beta testers is a pop-up status window which displays a quick query status for any query just by moving your mouse over an icon. (Hard to explain, you'll just have to see it to appreciate it.)

Word-count reports showing each agent's reply history based on the word-count of the manuscript.

Genre reports showing each agent's reply history based on the genre of the manuscript. (This was previously only available to premium members but in QT2 standard members will have full access to it.)

All of the above features, and more, are included as part of the free (standard) membership, the list of new features for premium members is even better, here are a few:

Even more detailed search capabilities.

Additional agent reports.

Personal statistics showing the statistics or your own queries and submissions, which you can breakdown by manuscript and folder, and view as easy-to-read pie charts.

The ability to customize reports by selecting your own date ranges so you can view data from any time frame.

The ability to create your own custom reports based on all the data collected by QT2. You define the criteria and the system will create and display the results for you.

Like I said, I will release the new version Jan. 1, and will continue to add to it after that because there is still so much more I want to do.

Also, note that while creating the new system, I have been very careful to keep the user-interface as similar as possible to that of the old system, so users will not have to relearn a lot of stuff.

The site will likely be unavailable for some time on December 31st while I install the new system. See you then, and I hope you like it.